Students that sat their Uganda Advanced Certificate of Education examinations 2018 performed better than their counterparts of 2017.
The development was revealed by Dan Odongo Nokrach the Uganda National Examinations Board, UNEB Executive Secretary during the release of 2018 UACE examination results at office of the Prime Minister this morning.
In terms of percentages, female candidates performed better than their male counterparts at the Principal level pass (A-E) in Arts, Physics and Agriculture. Male candidates were better in Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology and General paper. The failure rate of female candidates is at 0.8% as compared to their male counterparts at 1.8%.
A total of 83,536 candidates (85.8%) will qualify for admission compared to 83,301 (83.0%) in 2017.
According to Odongo, 98,524 sat the examination in 2018 from 100,066 that sat in 2017. This was a drop of 1,693 candidates (1.7%).
He said that although UNEB has not carried out any study to discover why the numbers reduced, the drop is suspected to be due to the fact that other post-UCE institutions absorb the learners. “This is evidenced by the increased enrolment in Primary Teachers’ College as well as technical and vocational institutions.
He however noted that there is a better performance in 2018 than that in 2017. But, there are concerns that entries for science subjects are quite low.
“Only just above 10% of the total candidature registered for science subjects. For females, the figure is even less than 10%. This is a persistent trend that needs to be addressed urgently to ensure that the nation has sufficient numbers of leaners in science disciplines to enroll for science based professional programmes at Universities and other Tertiary Institutions” Odongo noted.
He also noted the poor performance in Agriculture and Biology. Odongo explained that in the last three years, less than 50% of the candidates obtained passes at principal level. Adding that the performance in 2018 has been worse at less than 40%.
Meanwhile, cases of malpractice this year were also low this time round. Results of only 91 candidates were withheld by the Board. “UNEB will continue to put in place additional measures to eliminate the malpractice at this level so as to ensure credible results.